The twentieth century saw literally dozens of major adaptations of Bram Stoker‘s novel Dracula, from plays and musicals to radio productions, t.v. series, television adaptations and motion pictures. Yet that same period saw a dearth of Carmilla versions. LeFanu‘s classic in that period saw three radio versions, three major stage plays, three television adaptations (one…
Author: david
David MacDowell Blue blogs at Night Tinted Glasses. He graduated from the National Shakespeare Conservatory and is the author of The Annotated Carmilla. and Your Vampire Story (And How to Write It) as well as a theatrical adaptation of Carmilla.
Nosfera-Tunes! Snuttock
Music may be one of if not the most primeval of all art forms. Does it not predate language? Even today, with things like lyrics and moving images added, somehow music reaches right down deep into our reptile brain. It stirs our core. For those interested in the visceral experience of undeath–in terms of role-playing,…
Top Lady Vampires on T.V.
A new year arrives and with it time to think back and contemplate–sometimes drawing up lists. Lots of best vampire movies, hottest vampires, most badass vampire flicks etc. popping up so why not drop a list of the Top Ten Lady Vampires on T.V.? Why not indeed? In no particular order here is one such…
Let The Right One In Coming to NYC
It began with a novel ten years ago. Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Obviously a Jim Morrisey fan. The novel became a bestseller, was marketed abroad under the English title Let Me In. Set in the Swedish suburb of Blackeberg, it tells of a very unusual friendship between two extremely lonely…
Carmilla Web Series
This is turning into something of a Golden Age for fans of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu‘s vampire masterpiece Carmilla. Really! The last film adaptation was in 1990, but now not one but two new film versions are on the film festival circuit right now. Live theatre versions have popped up in Chicago and Los Angeles and…
Strain: Books Vs Series
Now the first season of The Strain has completed and its second season on the way, we can look make some kind of judgment regarding the show as a whole. More, we might as well compare and contrast it with the trilogy of novels upon which the series is based. There are spoilers ahead, in…
New DRACULA via Kickstarter!
The age of crowd-funding has arrived and with it lots more independent films! Yours truly even used the process to fund a stage production of LeFanu’s classic Carmilla, while the producers of The Curse of Styria used one to finish post-production on their independent film. Among them, a new kickstarter project looking to make a…
Who Else Could Play Selene?
On the heels of news regarding a fifth Underworld feature being written, more news comes of a whole new re-boot of the series as a whole! The Hollywood Reporter says Gary Goodman (who wrote the screenplay for Priest) has been hired for the job. Of course this might be a mistake–perhaps Goodman is working (or…
LeFanu at 200!
August 28, 1814 saw the birth of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu, an Irish Protestant writer who (like Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and George Bernard Shaw) became a popular author in England as well as abroad. He, however, became best known for an enigmatic vampire tale which in effected created a subgenre–Carmilla, the first lesbian vampire. While…
Remembering Lugosi
On this date, August 16, in the year 1956 the actor most associated with Bram Stoker‘s famous Count, died. He had a heart attack while sitting on his couch in his Los Angeles home. Perhaps inevitably, a new series of rumors about his life sprung up. One, that he was clutching a script by his…